I think I’m going to officially declare this blog to be on a hiatus- I haven’t posted anything in a month and a half. A few things have come up- mostly I just don’t have the time to think of something to post and to actually write a post, etc. Trying to focus on school, and I just don’t really know what to write about. Been feeling a bit of a slump in my body image recently (It seems like this happens all the time). I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it right now. I feel like I’m suffering from ‘wishing-her-body-were-the-way-it-was-when-I-first-felt-good-about-it’. I remember I finally started to feel good about myself after I had been going to Curves for awhile back like 3-4 years ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long), and I weighed like 60 pounds less than I do now. I don’t want to be ’skinny’, I guess I just wish I still looked the way I did then. I wish I didn’t feel that way, but I do. I hate to say I’m ‘changing some of my habits’ for a diet, but it seems like I am…

I guess I’m just at an unsure point right now. I need to focus on my schoolwork mostly. So I guess this is all for now….

Okay, so my whole “I’m going to post ever day in August” pretty much failed.  By the time I stopped updating I just didn’t have the time- I was working a lot more and had to fit in get togethers with friends before I came back to college, college shopping, blahblahblah, actually moving into college, the first week of classes. Just a lot. So I do apologize, mostly because there were a lot of comments that piled up to be approved (or spammed, there were quite a few of those too sadly).

But in any case, school is going great. I’m thinking this semester is going to be fun. On Tuesday my roommate and bestie (Nikki!), went to Yoga, which was so much fun. I wanted to go last semester but I always had class or something around the time and couldn’t go. This year, however, I definitely plan on going every week. The instructor was very nice, and there were a few other fatter girls (myself included), and she would sometimes say something like “it’s okay if your hands don’t reach the floor” or something that was referring to the issue of just having a bigger body. So I was really happy about that. I was initially worried about going because I wasn’t sure what kind of environment it would be, but I’m very glad I did now. Had a wonderful time and felt great afterwords.

There were a few comments that I wanted to address (now that I have finally gotten a chance to go through some of them).

omg you are so confident, i wish i was more like you, and also im about the same size as you, but i have stretch marks, you are so lucky that you dont have any!

I do actually have stretch marks- most of them on my stomach area. This is the only picture I really have of them, but maybe in the future I’ll do a special stretch marks feature!

Another comment on some commments:

You are not obese in those photos, you are a beautiful woman. Any guy who would not be pleased to be out on the town with you is nuts.

and

Hmm i think that comment was mine. I still don’t think you are obese, fuck what the BMI says, its a load of crap anyways. end of story.

There is more than one way to measure your weight and determine if its healthy for you. Try waist to hip – You still have a waist, its visible in your photos. Yes, you have fat, but you ARE NOT fat.

Okay, this is something that needs to be addressed. People keep telling me oh you’re not FAT, you’re not OBESE! I won’t argue that BMI is crap, I believe it is. But when the world uses that as their system to judge health, people need to see what the horrible monster known as obesity is. It’s not that I think I’m obese, it’s that according to the way the world impairs judgement on our bodies- I am obese. I am obese (should I say it five times fast?). Since I fail at explaining this as well as others, please refer to FillyJonk’s wonderful post here.

and quote:

This so-called epidemic is not made up of theoretical fucking people who are just as fat as you can possibly imagine. It’s made up of people you see every day AND WHO YOU PROBABLY THINK ARE “NOT FAT.” That’s the point of the BMI Project. That’s the point of the good work that Jezebel has, for the most part, been doing, making it clear that fear of fat is an injustice visited on all of us, of any shape. Jezzies seem to be okay hearing that from their thin editors — since we all know they’re really talking about thin girls, right, and it’s not okay for thin girls to have to think they’re fat! They might start to eat too little, which when you’re thin is called an eating disorder!

In fact, though, the difference between body shame for thin women and fat women is only one of scale. There’s not a magical cutoff where shame becomes healthy. There’s not a magical cutoff where bodies become unacceptable. There’s not a magical cutoff where weight loss pressure suddenly breaks free of patriarchy and societal scapegoating and becomes pure and beneficent concern for health. There’s only an arbitrary demographic cutoff where someone who was okay one pound ago becomes a statistic to scare children with.

And a lot of the people you think are “not fat“? They’re already past it.

Another post that I recently read and really loved was by Lesley over at Fatshionista.

So Miller handily brackets her own limits of where acceptable sizes should begin and end–it’s really no different than the current paradigm, it’s just moving the goalposts a bit–but she draws the line at “promoting obesity”. Of course. No one wants to promote obesity. Obese is, after all, one of the very worst things a person can be. To be Obese is to hate yourself, to allow your body to look that way, and to hate everyone else, to force them to see you in that shape. To be Obese is to be unsanitary, uneducated, unpleasant, and unhappy. To be Obese is to be unlikeable and more than that, unloveable. To be Obese is to be unacceptable.

The trouble, as Fillyjonk points out, is that many of us are obese, according to even the most forgiving definitions. I was legitimately obese as an eighth-grader, and I am legitimately–morbidly, even!–obese today. Truth be told I’m not sure there’s been a time since puberty that I was not obese, even at the apex of my compulsive-dieting and borderline eating-disordered teen years.

Today I can look back at my eighth grade self pictured above and think, Wow, I really wasn’t all that fat. Certainly not as fat as I thought I was. But the sharper truth is that even at the time, telling me I wasn’t fat wouldn’t have helped. Telling me I wasn’t fat would have done nothing to quell my insecurities, my gutter-level self-esteem, my passionate body hatred. Telling me I wasn’t fat, even if you told me every day, wouldn’t have changed a thing and it wouldn’t have made a dent. I knew I was fat, and the reality of it was irrelevant; I knew it, with all the certainty of my burgeoning adolescence. I knew. So telling me I wasn’t fat would not have helped, any more than it helps when anyone tells anyone they are not fat, when the person calling themselves fat really, truly believes in it.

What would have helped would have been someone telling me I was fine the way I was, fat or not. Or someone telling me being fat was not reason to hate myself, to starve myself, to hurt myself, to punish my body for failing to conform to the images in my head, or in the magazines I read. Or someone telling me being fat was not the end of my world, that it did not mean nobody would ever love me, or want to be my friend. Or even someone telling me, yes, even if you are Obese, you still deserve basic human respect. These are the things that would have helped; these are the things that may have saved me years of damage that then took additional years to repair. What was singularly unhelpful was being told I wasn’t fat in the first place, since that assertion did nothing to dismantle the idea that fat people richly deserve their ill treatment. Simply being identified as “not fat” meant the fear of becoming fat (or fatter) was allowed to remain solidly intact.

Okay, since I am a busy college student I must be rushing off to my class now! Hopefully I’ll update again lol!

… Well, it took me longer than I’d hoped to post an update.

Okay, so I have a lot of catch up on:

August 6th - This one gets even a little harder… resolve to say nothing negative at all for a whole day (or a week, or a month… how long can you go?) about anyone else’s appearance or your own appearance. If you think a negative thought about the way someone looks, counter it immediately with a positive one. This will help you to train yourself to better judge people on their actions and words, rather than theirappearance.

August 7th – Now that we’re feeling good & positive lets back those feelings up with some knowledge! Think about one health-related question you’ve always wondered about and do some fact finding. For instance: what BMI is/isn’t good for, what a “healthy weight” really entails, etc. I’ll be posting some excellent resources for research on August 6th!

August 8th – Take a day off [from doing these activities] to process the first seven days of your journey. Write about your experience, whatever it may be, and continue doing health research if you do desire.

August 9th – Lets help each other out in our fact-finding missions. If you have any questions you can’t answer/don’t want to research I’ll have a big open post this day where we can ask & answer  questions as a community.

August 10th -Let’s do some heavy lifting today;  set aside some time and write about your relationship with your body & the life experiences that have come to shape that relationship (like I did here.) Push yourself to really be honest and think about the cause & effect of things – sometimes knowing why you feel bad is all you need to stop feeling bad (and sometimes its just a fantastic first step!)

August 11th – Now that you have a more positive mindset & some good, reliable knowledge under your belt its time to set some goals. Think about the ways in which you can take concrete steps to feel better about your body and write them down as achievable goals. For instance, maybe you want to be able to run a mile without feeling winded or cut down on junk-food so that your body can function at a better level. Pick one goal and write it down, along with some steps you can make to achieve those goals. Plan it as specifically or as vaguely as you want, there’s just one catch: your goals have to be based on function, not appearance because the point is feeling better about our bodies without making judgments about how they look!

August 12th – Document your new body-positive mindset through art – write a poem, make a collage, body-map, paint, draw, doodle, write a song… I don’t care what you do so long as you do it!

Okay, since I have a lot to catch up on- I think I’ll cross out a few. I know for the past year or so my little negative voice hasn’t been around nearly as much as it used to be. It still pops up, but I know when it comes to judging others, it’s almost non existent. I know this is much better because I hear my mom and my sister make comments about other people, and I just think “Why would you say that?”. I notice them doing these things. I also notice how they judge themselves more. I know that I just think how I could care less what someone thinks about me, and I don’t really care about their appearance. I tend to stick to either being positive about someone, or not saying anything. After doing that for awhile you tend to stop thinking negatively at all. It’s better to see the beauty in others anyway, and there is always something there.

As for numero 10, I think the best I can give is my essay that I wrote. I don’t think I could re-do it much better.

I’ll go to the 11th next- in all honesty, I would like to be healthier. I think my habits are pretty normal- I’m not a health nut but I also don’t eat twinkies all day either. I just never really feel like exercising, mostly because I think there’s a stigma to it (I also never feel like it when I have to work, which is often, because I’m standing around on my feet hours at a time and I’m already tired from that). I think exercise, I think weight loss. That’s the point of it, which has been continuously drilled into my brain. I’d really like to take up yoga, because I honestly hate sweating. Ugh… Yoga is nice and relaxing but still works you out and feels good. So I think I will try and get into that habit of that. I know my college has some water aerobics classes- I might look into that since the sweat factor doesn’t really matter there (and I lurvee the pool lol!). As I did last semester, I’m still debating about singing up for Healthy U… I think I might try it- if they push too much weight loss shit I’m just end it. But what i heard about it before it seems to encourage different goals depending on the individual’s wants. While I wish it wouldn’t encourage weight loss as an ultimate goal at all, everything can’t go the way you want. And maybe I should eat less french fries. I didn’t binge on them or anything, but they always had them for dinner at school, and I’m a picky eater so I would always get them. They were fucking good! And I won’t mark them as “BADBOOGIEBOOGIE” food, but I guess I should try to eat other things (I’m just too much of a picky eater… I should try new stuff)

And I think tonight for today’s goal- I’m going to draw a pretty picture (lol). Now, it will probably take a week for me to finish it, but I’m going to start tonight.

Well, that’s all for right now! I have to go get ready to go to the police station to get my finger prints taken- LOL! I have to do it to declare my major at school.. And then totally watching Mad Men because I just got the first season after hearing so many good things about it! WOO!

I will try and do a better job of keeping up with this! These last two weeks before I go back to school are becoming pretty hectic though!

Okay, time to play catch up. I’m trying the best I can to keep up- but working gets in the way and sometime I just can’t get around to doing something. So here goes!

August 3rd – Time to start thinking a little bigger. Set aside some time & get reading something positive that’s going to make you feel good about the way you look! I’ll have some reading recommendations up that day if you’re stuck!

August 4th – It’s time to turn the positivity you’ve been building up for the last few days  say something positive to everyone you interact with – boost their self esteem!

August 5th – Complimenting others is easy, complimenting yourself is the tricky thing (that is, until you’ve had some practice!) Lets play a little game to make it easier: make up a silly rule (like  “every time I pass a mirror today I have to think one good thing about my body” or “every hour I have to think about one thing I love about myself”) and stick to it for the whole day.

As for positive reading- I know I blogged about this in the past (and there are also some great recommendations in the comments section for anyone interested). My all time favorite fat positive book is Fat!So? By Marilyn Wann. I still find it ironic that I got this book, which pretty much began my fat acceptance journey, for free at the Curves that I used to go to (there was a table with books and magazines that were free). I wonder how different my life would be if I hadn’t decided to take it, or if someone else had grabbed it and I’d never gotten the chance. I believe I will read a chapter of it for day three .

As for day four, I’d have to say that I’m generally pretty complimenting. Or maybe I just like to think I’m a really nice person lol. I know that my mental state has definitely shifted from comparing myself to everyone else (and judging them in the process), to seeing beauty in everyone else. It’s such a better mentality. While I have sucky days- I’d say I’m a pretty positive person, and like to inflict that positiveness on others (BECAUSE I AM EVILLL!!! MWHAHAHAHAAAA! INFLICTING!!)

Okay, as for the fifth one… hmm… I’m not sure what I will do. I think I will go with the mirror one!

.. Sorry if it seems like I skim over a few of these. While I know my self esteem isn’t rock solid and gold plated, for some of these I feel like I’ve already gone through a step or two. But it is always nice to have a refresher…

Okay… I’m off to attempt to go to sleep!

I just noticed this on your blog:

Now I’ll try to remain normal…

…..

PLZOMGCOMETOMAISKUULITWULDBETOTALIAWESOMEANDIWULDLIEKTOTALLI DIEEEEOFSPAZZITUDE!!!!!

….

With love,

Lizzie.

…

That did not work. lol.

Okay, back to scheduled programming.

Okay, so I am writing this at 11:50 PM- so it’s still August second!!! lol. I wanted to post earlier but I had to work blahblahblah didn’t get around to it. So here is the activity for today:

August 2nd – Grab a huge pile of pictures of yourself  (ones you love, ones you hate, and the ones in between), sit down, and spend however long you have to coming up with at least one positive thing about the way you look in each picture. Scrapbook them if you want to (its a nice thing to look back to), do it out loud with a friend, or just complete this exercise in your head – the point is to start focusing on the positive parts of the picture, and yourself, instead of the negative things!

This one will be fun! Since I love pictures and such- even though I would really like to make a scrapbook of all kinds of pictures I find inspiring- I’ll post some of my favorites of me here.

This picture is from two years ago- and I’ve always loved it. It may sound stupid but I love how graceful my hands look. I also think my eyes look fierce and I just love it all around.

I love my smile in this picture- and how every time I see it I feel beautiful and it just makes me happy.

Just like the one above, I love my smile and happiness. And I think my legs look cute~

At first I didn’t like this picture- because I’m not wearing any makeup,  have zitty teenager skin all over the place, and thick eyebrows. But the more I look at it- the more I feel like I look pretty anyway.

And I like how I can still rock some purple eyeliner

I bought this super cute cupcake dress like a year and a half ago- but I never wore it because even though I liked it- I wasn’t totally comfortable in it (and I never felt I had a good occasion to wear it). So last week (when out with my besties) I decided to just go ahead and wear it- and it looked totally cute. (*waves hi to future roommate Nikki!* )

hmm… As for a picture I really didn’t like?

.. This was one of the pictures from the beach set that I just didn’t like (and got sent to the computer trash can).. But if I have to say something positive about it- my boobs look pretty good

Well, I suppose that is all for this post. I wanted to have more pictures but A) I keep using up too much of the monthly GB allotted for being online and B) the post would take longer than it already does to load. Plus it’s 1 in the morning lol. I’ll post again later tomorrow today.

So, since I’ve actually been trying to respond to emails instead of being a shy-away-from-comments-blogger (which I do tend to be- I’m much more of a post-and-hopefully-people-like-it-then-run-away type), and I was asked if I would participate in Self-Esteem Awareness Month. It’s basically a project (here’s the very short and simple guidelines page) that spans a whole month which purpose is to boost self esteem- every day for the month of August there’s a little goal/activity to do. Instead of me blathering on about it everyone really just go check it out. (I was going to post about this yesterday, but I slept over at a friends and got home only to go to work soon afterwords so I didn’t really get a chance.) I looked through all of the activities and they seem really good, so I’d definitely encourage anyone to participate as well (on their blog or just at home)… Even though I feel like sometimes I don’t need to do go through these type of exercises again, I’ll make a post like I did a few days ago and realize that I need to keep reminding myself.

Soooo, without further ado:

August 1st – Lets start this all of with a simple exercise that has been suggested on this blog before; write a list of at least five things about yourself that you love and tuck that list away somewhere for the next time you’re feeling down. I tend to make a new list/add to an old one every week or so – its a really quick & easy self-esteem boost.

Okay, five things that I love about myself:

1.) My eyes, my wild curly hair, my lips
2.) How I love to laugh at everything
3.) My thighs
4.) My smile
5.) My love of drawing and creating

This list was actually hard to make… I wasn’t sure if I should write down physical things about myself that I love, or anything about myself. So I tried to go for both. Maybe I’m just really bad at making lists lol.

So anyway, I feel like this will be a fun project- I’ll try to keep up with it the best that I can. (At least now I’ll have something to blog about every day )

*EDIT* I guess I should be more specific- does anyone know how to get on the Google Reader Fatosphere?

This may be stupid question to ask- but is my blog actually on the fatosphere feed? I thought that I had asked for it to be, and that I was in the fatosphere yahoo group or something (I can’t remember anymore), but I never see any of my posts on it… If it’s not, I’m not really sure how to get on it, since what I did before didn’t really work.

Again, may just be me being stupid, but could anyone help me out with this?

(and I actually have a post planned for tomorrow! I’m on a BLOGGIN’ ROLL! lol)

So I got another comment from someone who I should’ve just marked as spam, but being who I am I didn’t.

Uh, so are any of those quotes from actual MD’s? What do you think they’re going to say if they come from a magazine targeted at fat people? So you’re saying that doctors are lying to their patients when they tell them they have to lose weight or they will die? Clearly, its all one big conspiracy. Just like September 11th and the moon landing.

This sounds like someone who is one of those people who would tell you to not get so worked out about something- to just accept it and stop overreacting or some such bullshit.

No, most of the quotes are not from ‘actual MD’s’ (I only had three quotes anyway)- the first two are from a nurse, and don’t discount nurses, okay. The third one was from a blog (I don’t know where the ‘magazine targeted at fat people’ came from…) which had the links to all it’s sources and references at the bottom of the page.

I don’t think doctors are lying to their patients- I think a lot of them just don’t know better because they have been trained with all these stereotypes and lies about fat. (And what’s with this putting doctors on a pedestal- they aren’t always right anyway, they make mistakes just like everyone else.)

I don’t see how this is a conspiracy- I’m not pulling this out of my ass. There are books, facts, and studies to back this up. Maybe if you ever bothered to look into it and bother to read a book about it (here, here, here, here- these are just a few) instead of telling me to shut up and accept what is ‘obviously true’, you might see a different outlook.

I don’t know why I bother trying to prove me point to people who obviously don’t want to change their minds anyway, so I’ll just stop now.

I was actually going to post about something different- but I think I’ll save that for tomorrow.

Well, since now I’m finally done feeling like shit, I’ll try to continue the positive trend and post some pictures on the beach! I’ve been home from vacation for a couple of days now, so I think it’s a good time to post them.

I do feel a little bit sad that I didn’t rock a bikini this year. I’m not sure if it was because I feel like I’ve put on weight and the suits that I have don’t fit as well, or what. I hate to feel like it was because I just felt more comfortable not wearing one. I hate that I feel like I shouldn’t wear a bikini because of my body- that my confidence isn’t what it was before… But, oh well. Maybe I’ll try and rock one later.

I guess that’s all for now~